Marans Thread - breed discussion & pictures are welcome!

[Hens and Roos]

Quote:
is that boy a blue cuckoo?

that is what the person I got him from told me, I have a hard time seeing blue in him

i guess I am so use to DD's Blue Andalusian's color and was in that line of thinking. Any feedback is welcome, he is a project right now, I am waiting for another group of eggs to hatch- he has 2 Blue Marans hens with him now but they both show a side sprig on each side of their comb so I am testing him with them to see if he is a carrier for side sprig or carnation comb.

 

[gilavina]

Quote:
is that boy a blue cuckoo?

that is what the person I got him from told me, I have a hard time seeing blue in him

i guess I am so use to DD's Blue Andalusian's color and was in that line of thinking. Any feedback is welcome, he is a project right now, I am waiting for another group of eggs to hatch- he has 2 Blue Marans hens with him now but they both show a side sprig on each side of their comb so I am testing him with them to see if he is a carrier for side sprig or carnation comb.

I'm pretty certain he is a blue cuckoo indeed. I'm working on them right now, and have not seen one that has that much patterning yet. Granted I only hatched out half a dozen blues...and am keeping the three girls to run in with my best cuckoo boy for next season.

Do you have any other pics you could get of him...like from the side profile and etc? I'd like to see him

 

[flgardengirl]

Quote:
I love the looks of your male cuckoo. So do you have other hens besides the one that died? In other words are you selling any eggs?
I am looking for some nice silver/black cuckoos (eggs) with feathered leg genes and no gold leakage. The offspring don't have to be all feathered but some genes in that direction would be good. Blue cuckoo would be okay too as long as there is no gold leakage.

 

[Debbi]

Quote:
is that boy a blue cuckoo?

that is what the person I got him from told me, I have a hard time seeing blue in him

i guess I am so use to DD's Blue Andalusian's color and was in that line of thinking. Any feedback is welcome, he is a project right now, I am waiting for another group of eggs to hatch- he has 2 Blue Marans hens with him now but they both show a side sprig on each side of their comb so I am testing him with them to see if he is a carrier for side sprig or carnation comb.



Hens, I'm not sure that will help you decide if he carries the gene. If the girls are expressing sprigs or a carnation, that means they already carry both genes for it. They alone will pass it on, and then you would suspect him of passing it on. I may be wrong on this with the sprigs, but it sure works that way for the carnation! I'm sure Don or Walt can help you more with this.

 

[Debbi]

Let me extrapalate on this. I have one young pullet that I believe is a Clyde daughter, but is out of one of my original hens that carry the carnation gene, and one that has a carnation comb. All three of those hens are hatchmates. Now, so far, this young pullet at 15 weeks, does NOT show any sprigs or the carnation comb. I say "so far" because none of the other pullets that now have the carnation combs, showed any signs of it until they were about 15 weeks or so. Young cockerels, however, will show the beginings of a carnation at a very early age, like 4 weeks. Sad thing the pullets don't until later.

Now, long story shorter, my plan is to breed this one young pullet back to her daddy, Clyde, to see if he carries the gene. Seeing as she is from a source that either carries or has the carnation, she already has ONE gene for it. Now when bred to Clyde, if I get a bunch of little ones with funky combs, then that would tell me he carries a copy (one gene) as well. It takes to to do the Carnation Tango!

Do you see what I mean??

 

[berkeleysprings]

to bad ya cant cut a chunk off a nice bird and plant it like a fruit tree lol we all would have Granny smith apples , i like sour
Quote:
the breeding of one extreme to another, will most of the time, get you deeper into a hole of non consistancy and poorer quality.. Look at it this way, you take a orange and breed it to an apple... you get something in the middle... But when you take those two offspring and breed them back togther-- you get apples, oranges, grapes, watermellon, and everything else in the basket...

You have to remember when making "peice" matings... with that good piece, also comes a terrible one ( and in almost every single case, that terrible peice will be far harder to breed out of them; than that good peice would be to get into them with another breeding stock selection.

What I'm saying is that you want to breed for the middle of the road, and not towards any extremes. the most complete to the most complete...

Makes sense in theory, but I've seen two great animals produce absolute crap; two mediocre animals produce nothing but jewels! Now granted, that was not with chickens, but when it comes right down to it, it's all a crapshoot with genetics. And with chickens, unless you have raised and bred many chicks for quite a few generations, who really knows what is behind what? All you can do is go by the visuals when starting, and brother, do I NEED a new pair of glasses!

 

[Debbi]

You got that right Randy! I wish they were like Mr. Potato Heads, where you could just remove and exchange parts to get what you want!

Ahhh, in a perfect world...

Are you going to be feeling the hurricane??

 

[flgardengirl]

Yeah rooted/cloned chickens I am pretty good at doing that with plants I root and graft all kinds of stuff. That would be COOL if we could 'practically' do that with chickens.
I could started have had a piece of my Bella before she died

 

[dkcrumly]

I was wondering if the female chicks get their tail feathers before the males?


kristen

 

[Debbi]

Well, there's always cloning, but that would mean I'd have to have some good ones first!

I did a bunch of the grafting with trees years ago when I worked for the State Forest Nursery. Very interesting stuff.